When God blessed Idaho, there was no man-made plutonium in our water.

The politicians are hoping you are too busy with family holidays to notice their silent broken promise. It would be a nice Christmas present for the creator if we respected his gift and protected our water for the generations to come.

Do you remember the nuclear waste deal in 1995? The Lockheed nuclear businessmen teamed with the Republican politicians and ex-Gov. Cecil Andrus in the "Get the Waste Out" campaign. Colorful ads promised this nuclear deal would "say no to leaving waste over the aquifer." They promised if we import tons of foreign spent nuclear fuel, this deal would "guarantee that the federal government must come up with the money to clean up existing Idaho National Engineering Laboratory waste for disposal outside our state."

Well, the final buried plutonium "clean-up" plan is out for official public comment now, quietly released during the holiday season. Without a whisper from the politicians or state nuclear oversight team, the "preferred alternative" No. 4 does not come even close to removing 10 percent of the buried plutonium, which is leaking over our water supply in a flood zone.

Why is the state not demanding alternative No. 5, which removes "all" the buried plutonium? Why did the state say, "they were supporting the partial retrieval and awaiting to see the public comment"?

The final plan concludes a full clean-up is too expensive! Have you ever seen an Idaho politician refuse $8 billion in nuclear jobs? Why are the politicians refusing to demand a full clean up? There is more than one ton of dumped plutonium particles, with billions of cancer causing particles in each pound.

Do you remember the infamous Pit 9? In 1993, that was chosen as the worst plutonium pit, and the plan was to remove it all, and then get the rest. Then Lockheed's subsidiary company that won the contract, refused to lift a shovel full. Lockheed's subsidiary sued Lockheed to collect the money anyway. Now, this final plan cherry-picks just a very small portion of Pit 9!

The state has bragged they won the Clinton-esque court case over the definition of "all" the buried plutonium. Removing all the plutonium waste is what we were promised in 1970. To be clear: 1) the 1995 ads promised all buried plutonium would be removed. That would be 58,000 cubic meters. 2) The court ordered that since "the state agreed to change the definition of transuranic waste" during the deal negotiations, that only 30,000 cubic meters of the buried plutonium must be removed. So, really, "all means half" according to our trusty politicians and state officials! But now, this final plan does not even come close to removing even that half, or the 30,000 cubic meters, of court-ordered buried plutonium. Not even close!

Our politicians this year also volunteered Idaho for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership project. The environmental impact statement is silently under way, but this means Idaho will reprocess spent nuclear fuel from all over the world. This process will leak plutonium into our air and bury more plutonium particle waste over our water. The politicians' push to resuscitate the deadly nuclear power business has also renewed uranium-mining plans for our mountains in Idaho.

Please make an official comment on the final "clean-up" plan. Simply ask for the full clean up proposed in Alternative 5 at Brandt.Meagher@icp.doe.gov. Written comments go to Mark R. Arenaz, Idaho Cleanup Project, DOE Idaho Operations Office, Mail Stop 1222, P.O. Box 1625, Idaho Falls, ID 83415-1222. The plan is at https://idahocleanupproject.com/Portals/0/documents/BuriedWasteProposedPlan.pdf.

For more details, email me at nifty1@cableone.net.

Dr. Peter Rickards is a Twin Falls podiatrist and environmental activist.